One of the most common complaints I hear from my clients is this:
"I can't seem to motivate the salespeople to call on prospects
and develop them into new customers."
There is a relatively simple, fun and inexpensive way to remedy
this situation. It's called a sales blitz. Unfortunately, few
companies are even aware of it, and fewer yet use it.
Here's the problem. Most B2B sales efforts are organized around a
sales rep who is responsible for a specific set of accounts, or a
specific geographical area. Typically, that rep is expected to
grow the business with the current customers as well as to
identify and develop new customers. Clearly, most sales people
are better at one part of this two-part responsibility than the
other. Usually, developing new customers takes second place in
the salesperson's priorities. Staying within their comfort zones
and focusing on keeping the current customers happy becomes a
higher priority on a day-to-day basis. As a result, few new
customers are developed, and sales management is continually
frustrated with the company's poor performance. Rather than
continue beating a dead horse by trying to motivate the sales
force to create new customers, one alternate approach is to
implement a sales blitz.
What's a sales blitz? It's an organized effort by the company to
focus all of its sales force on a specific task in one specific
territory. The most common task is to identify, qualify and
engage potential new customers. But, a sales blitz could also be
used to quickly communicate some hot new product or service to a
market.
A sales blitz has the advantage of focusing the entire sales
force on a specific task. That alone will bring you far greater
results than if you'd just left it to each salesperson to do on
their own.
But there are some additional fringe benefits. For example, the
preparation for a sales blitz provides you an opportunity to
thoroughly train the sales force in one identifiable step in the
sales process. Their competency thus improves. Additionally, you
can usually measure their activities more specifically than
normal. So, they become more competent and confident, and you
more knowledgeable in the activities of your sales force.
Let me illustrate with an example. Let's say that you have group
of eight salespeople who are each expected to build the business
with current customers as well as create new ones. You are
continually frustrated with their performance in creating new
customers. Out of the group of eight people, you're lucky to have
one new customer a month. Since you are not satisfied with this,
you decide to do a sales blitz for new customers.
So, you select one geographical area or market segment on which
to focus. In this case, let's say one of your salespeople has a
relatively new territory, so you select that territory as your
focus. You decide that for a period of three days, you are going
to pull your entire sales force out of their territories and
direct them into the new salesperson's territory.
You bring them together, and explain the project. Their task is
to identify, qualify and engage as many prospects as possible.
The information gained and the doors opened in the process will
then be provided to the territory rep, who will be expected to
follow up and turn a significant number of these qualified
prospects into customers.
You create a form for each salesperson. They must collect the
information specified on the form from each prospect. The
information could include such basics as the name and title of
the key contact person, some information about the account, and a
sense of the opportunity for your company.
You then train the sales force in how to do just that one aspect
of the sales process - make a cold call, collect some qualifying
information, and fill in the form. You spend a day role-playing
and practicing.
Next, you provide them with a list of current customers (off
limits) and a list of potential customers. You break the group
into four teams of two people each, and on the map, outline four
different areas for each. You announce that at the end of each
day, you'll hold a short meeting. At that meeting, you'll recount
success stories, share information and tactics that have worked
for various team members, and count up the number of contacts
made and forms filled out by each team. The team with the most
completed forms will be the day's winner, and each member of the
winning team will be awarded a gift certificate for dinner for
him and his spouse.
At this point, you have organized the group's efforts by
identifying the specific job to be done, provided the tools
(forms and company literature), trained them in the task, focused
them on a specific area, and added some structured time to learn
and to be recognized.
On each day of the blitz, you stay in cell phone contact with
each group, encouraging them throughout the course of the day.
At the end of the three days, you will probably have accumulated
more prospects for your territory rep to follow up on than he/she
would have done on his own in the course of a year or two.
Turn them over to the rep, keep a copy yourself, and watch the
progress he/she makes in each account.
What have you accomplished? A number of powerful things:
1. You've created more qualified leads for the territory rep in a
few days than he/she would have created on his own in a few
years.
2. You've created a fun experience for all your reps.
3. Each rep has learned some new skills as they focused on just
one part of the sales process and repeated it over and over.
They will be better at creating new customers in their own
territory as a result of this learning experience.
That's a sales blitz.
Keep in mind that there is nothing new about this approach. It
may be new to you, but it's a time-tested, proven best practice.
When I was 17 years old, I attained my first sales job working
summers for the Jewel Tea Company. They were using sales blitzes
as a regular part of their sales efforts. I won't tell you how
long ago that was, but you can measure the time duration in
decades.
A couple of years ago, when I was working with one of my clients
to establish a new sales force, we routinely used sales blitzes,
rotating the blitz every other month from one territory to
another. In the first two years, six sales people created 638 new
accounts.
Here are some dos and don'ts of organizing a sales blitz:
1. Have a specific task in mind, and make it as simple as
possible. In the example above, the salespeople were to engage a
prospective account, and fill out a form that indicated whether
or not the account was worth the time. They collected some
information, and attempted to have an introductory conversation
about the company in order to raise some interest on the part of
the account. So, in other words, the task was a cold call to
qualify a prospect.
2. Focus everyone on a specific area or market segment.
3. Equip each person with the tools necessary to accomplish this
task.
4. Thoroughly train them. Even with an experienced sales group,
I'd spend at least one day role- playing, critiquing and
practicing. Remember, cold calls are probably not the strength of
any of your salespeople. Ignore their protests that they "know
how to do it," and train them as if they were brand new. You may
be surprised at how far many of them have to come in order to be
competent at it.
5. Keep it short and sweet. Three days in my example.
6. Break the group up into pairs or teams, and create a
competition among them.
7. Have some kind of daily debriefing. A half hour meeting at the
end of each day was my choice.
8. Offer a daily recognition and reward.
9. Post the results, and follow through on the leads created to
make sure that they are not squandered.
A sales blitz, well designed and well managed, can solve one of
your company's biggest shortcomings and spin off a number of
valuable fringe benefits.
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